A/N – This one is fairly gory and has a lot of blood in it. Poor Sheldon.
The Bus Pants Mugging
Sheldon got off the bus at his stop and began the short walk home in the dark. He was very careful not to touch his contaminated bus pants while he walked, and held the newly purchased comic books away from himself in their plastic bag so they didn't touch him either. It had taken a lot of restraint on his part not to get them out and start reading on the bus. But he knew that if he did, he'd get nauseated and ruin the rest of the evening.
"Hey, you there!"
Sheldon heard the shout but he didn't recognise the voice, so he kept walking.
"I'm talking to you!"
The voice was closer, almost right behind Sheldon, making him jump slightly and quicken his pace. Despite how early it was in the evening, there wasn't anyone else about.
A strong hand closed around Sheldon's upper arm and stopped his forward motion. Sheldon was turned around against his will and came face to face with two men who looked both stupid and mean – not a good combination. However, what they appeared to lack in intelligence, they more than made up for in muscle. They were roughly Sheldon's height, but with arms twice as thick and the shorter of the two looked like his shirt was a few sizes too small.
Sheldon decided to play it cool and asked, "Do I know you?"
"Hand over your wallet and your phone."
"Oh, please," Sheldon sighed. "Petty thievery isn't exactly a lucrative way of making a living. Especially considering I had exactly the right amount of money with me when I left in order to take the bus to the comic book store, purchase the editions which came out today and then return home."
"What's he talking about?" One of the men asked the other.
"No idea and I don't care," the other one answered, sticking a hand in his pocket and drawing something out. There was a small snicking sound as a blade flicked out the end of the object. "Hand over your wallet and phone or I'll gut you like a fish."
Sheldon was staring at the knife, feeling his heart racing while going through the possibilities of what might happen next. He could run, but he wasn't sure they wouldn't chase and catch him to carry out their primitive surgical threat, either that or the man with the knife was an expert thrower and he'd get it in the back. He could shout for help, but there was no one around and no guarantee that anyone would help him before it was too late anyway. Another option was to fight, but he doubted he'd last long. Which led to the most logical solution...
"But I've got my Justice League membership card in my wallet!" Sheldon blurted. "And no money of any kind." He'd spent a lot of his childhood fending off much larger and scarier children trying to steal his things and he wasn't about to let these overgrown bullies have their way.
"Are you bored?" knife man asked the other.
"Yeah."
The man holding the knife lunged and Sheldon lifted his arms to protect his torso. There was a brief sensation of a cold intrusion into his right forearm, which quickly turned into pain and then warmth as he started to bleed.
"Ow!" Sheldon staggered backwards and clutched his arm to his chest, still holding onto the plastic bag with his comics inside. "You stabbed me!" he cried indignantly. "And you ruined my jacket! I like this jacket, I've had it for years." He didn't look at his arm because he knew that if he did, he'd see blood and faint and then the men could do whatever they liked to him.
Sheldon sucked in a shaky breath as he continued to walk backwards and the men rounded on him. He couldn't help it as his eyes glanced down at the blade and saw it was tinged red with his blood. Waves of dizziness washed over him, threatening to drop him at any moment. He said, "You know, you should go and get a job to actually earn the money you make."
His mother's words floated down to him as the knife wielder came at him low and plunged the blade into his body again: Try not to insult the people attacking you, or they'll only hit you harder.
Sheldon felt his will wavering and his hands shook as he reached into his pocket and got out his phone and wallet and handed them over. He wasted no time in retreating and when he turned to make sure he wasn't being followed, much to his relief, the men had gone. But now he had more pressing matters to attend. Like the fact that he'd been violently stabbed and his breaths were getting faster but their effect on oxygenating his remaining blood was getting worse. He needed to find some way to stop the bleeding but for that, he needed help.
He might be the most intelligent person in the world, but he was stupid to think that he could outsmart a knife. He should've run or just handed his stuff over without question then he might not have been attacked.
How he managed to get all the way back to the apartment is something that Sheldon can't recall later. Luckily the thugs weren't bright enough to take his keys so he got inside the building.
"This sucks," Sheldon said with a wince as pain radiated around his pelvis and down both legs. He felt horribly dizzy and shaky, like his legs were about to give way at any moment.
If the Elves still sung songs of heroic deeds, they'd need to compose a doozy to retell how Sheldon walked, staggered and eventually crawled his way up the stairs and into Apartment 4A. He had to pause for breath on the floor below his apartment and just lay there on the carpet for a few minutes, curled up around his injured arm and side, waiting for the weakness to subside, but it only got worse and he knew it was now impossible for him to get better without help.
"I thought this was my floor," Sheldon said to the door looming over him where he lay. He blinked through the blurriness of his vision and the writing on the door panel formed into 3A. "Where do I live again? Why am I lying on the floor like this?" He closed his eyes tightly and steeled himself for more pain as he rolled over onto all fours so he could crawl.
The Elven song would die on the lips of that fair folk when Sheldon finally entered 4A and as his vision narrowed down to a single point, he found that he couldn't summon up another ounce of energy to keep going. And so he collapsed on the floor and continued to leak, his arm outstretched towards the phone sitting innocuously on the table beside his spot, which might as well have been a light-year away for all the good it could do him now.
xxx
"I had a nice time tonight," Penny said to Leonard as they went through the front door to the apartment block.
"So did I," Leonard said with a grin.
They began to walk up the stairs.
"Would you like to go out again some time next week?" Leonard asked with his face turning hopeful.
"Maybe, can I let you know?"
"Sure, sure."
They reached the second floor and Leonard's eyes moved down to the carpet and noticed a dark spot. "Hey did they forget to clean again?"
Penny also glanced down while they walked up the next flight of stairs. "It seems to be getting worse."
"That's odd. Maybe someone was carrying something that was leaking?"
"Whatever it was, it looks like most of it came out here," Penny said as she frowned down at a very large dark stain on the landing of the floor below theirs.
"Or it might be something more serious," Leonard said in alarm as he noticed a red hand print on the wall leading up to their floor.
They ran the rest of the way and both gasped in shock when they saw that the trail led right to the door of 4A. The red marks were smeared all up the door and on the lock and handle.
"Is that blood?" Penny asked quietly, her face going pale.
"I really hope not," Leonard's voice shook as much as his hands as he pushed the key into the lock, but the door was already unlocked and he braced himself as he pushed it open.
The sight that greeted Penny and Leonard as they went into the apartment was both shocking and unpleasant. Sheldon was lying sprawled face down on the floor, a trail of what was now certainly blood led from the door to his body and there was more around him. There was also a white plastic bag clutched in one of his hands, although it now had droplets of blood all over it.
"Oh my god," Penny gasped.
Leonard was horrified by what he saw, but he had to shelve his feelings as he sprang into action. First he went to his friend and pushed his fingers to Sheldon's neck and closed his eyes as he whispered, "Please... please..."
It took a few moments, but a rapid and weak pulse tapped against his fingers. "Call for an ambulance" he instructed Penny as he tried to locate the source of the bleeding.
Penny still hadn't moved.
"Please hurry!" Leonard implored. "And get me some towels."
Penny snapped out of her shocked trance and pulled out her phone as she made her way to the kitchen and threw a couple of towels to Leonard.
Leonard turned Sheldon over onto his back and found that Sheldon's face was devoid of all colour. Leonard unzipped Sheldon's jacket trying and failing to hide his disgust as his fingers encountered stickiness and got covered in blood.
"I don't know what happened to him!" Penny cried in distress down the phone. "He's covered in blood!"
Leonard encountered a thoroughly blood-soaked shirt underneath Sheldon's jacket and the moment he got the sleeves of the jacket off, he found a nasty wound. It was a neat cut, but looked deep. He wrapped a towel around Sheldon's arm and tied it tightly then kept his hands pressed against it. "I think he's been stabbed."
"They'll be here in five minutes," Penny said as she came over. "Why didn't he phone for help?"
"I don't know." Leonard said as he frowned down at Sheldon's chest which was rising and falling shallowly where he was barely breathing.
"What's wrong?" Penny asked.
"I don't think that can be the only one. There's far too much blood."
"How long has he been lying here?" Penny asked in a small voice. "While we were out at dinner enjoying ourselves, he was all alone and hurting."
Leonard said, "Keep pressure on his arm," as he passed it to Penny. Leonard grimaced as he started a more thorough survey of Sheldon's condition and soon located another wound in Sheldon's lower left abdomen, practically in his hip. It seemed to be the main source of the blood as the red liquid welled up and oozed from it the moment it was uncovered. There didn't seem to be any more injuries so he pressed another towel against it and they waited for the ambulance.
When the paramedics finally arrived after what seemed like hours spent in fear that Sheldon's chest would stop moving entirely, they wasted no time in situating Sheldon on the gurney and cutting away his clothes. Leonard and Penny held onto each other while IV line needles were stuck in both of Sheldon's arms and oxygen was applied and pressure dressings were torn open and plastic packaging was discarded on the floor.
The paramedics said the name of the hospital where they were taking Sheldon and then, just as abruptly, they were gone.
"How can one man hold so much blood?" Penny asked as she hugged Leonard more tightly and turned her face away with her eyes closed. "Especially considering how thin he is?"
"You'll be surprised," Leonard said, staring down at the mess on the floor as he held Penny close.
xxx
A few days after Sheldon was released from hospital with strict instructions not to do anything energetic and pop his stitches, Leonard once again found his friend unconscious on the floor in the living room of their apartment. This time it was in front of a whiteboard with some half finished formulae on it. An uncapped board marker lay nearby.
"Oh not again!" Leonard said in alarm as he crouched down and gently touched Sheldon's upper arm.
"I'm sleeping," an annoyed voice responded.
"On the floor, in the middle of the night?" Leonard grabbed Sheldon and helped him to sit up.
Sheldon held a hand to his head and blinked woozily. "I must've passed out."
"Come on," Leonard said as he pulled Sheldon's uninjured arm over his shoulders and awkwardly helped his injured friend limp over to the sofa and put him down in his seat. Leonard sat down too. "The doctors said you'd feel weak for a while and that you should rest as much as possible."
"But I don't want to rest. I'm bored."
"I know, but even the transfusions couldn't replace all the blood you lost."
Sheldon's eyes widened in alarm and he clamped his hand down tightly against the wound in his hip. "I wish you'd stop reminding me that I have other people's blood swilling around inside me! It's bad enough getting poked and prodded and stitched up like a stuffed toy!"
They sat in silence for a moment as Sheldon's words settled heavily over them. The floor had been cleaned, as had the carpet, walls and door outside the apartment, but Sheldon wasn't as quick to recover as the furnishings.
"I don't ever want to leave this apartment again," Sheldon said after a while.
"You're going to have to eventually."
"But what if it happens again?"
"They caught the men responsible the same evening you were attacked," Leonard said.
Sheldon gave a soft snort of derision, "Trying to use my bank card. Amateurs. But that still doesn't preclude the possibility that it might happen again."
"You can't let that stop you going out. Anything could happen, even if you stay here."
"That's not really helping your case."
"I'm just saying, you can't stop doing the things you did before, just because something bad happened once."
Sheldon looked down at his lap and clutched his injured arm to himself. "I nearly died. The doctor said if it had been any longer before I was found, I wouldn't have survived."
Leonard sighed and looked sad. It hadn't been easy for him either in the aftermath since the evening Sheldon had been so savagely attacked. "How about we do things in stages?"
Sheldon looked up. "What do you propose?"
"I go with you everywhere for the first few weeks until you feel comfortable with that. Then I'll accompany you on a few bus journeys until you're back to normal."
"I note at least two flaws in your plan - you have a car, it'd be pointless for you to come with me on the bus when you could drive me. And the first stage is how we did things anyway."
Leonard brightened up. "So you're okay to start the first stage tomorrow?"
"Well technically it's later today, as it's 2am."
"Today then?"
Sheldon mulled it over for a few seconds. "All right. But on the way home we're going to the train store and the comic book store so I can catch up with what I've missed."
"Fine."
"Oh and I need to go clothes shopping as I'm short one pair of pants and underwear and a couple of shirts. My jacket also got ruined. Every time I see my poorly stocked wardrobe it makes me shudder."
It made Leonard shudder too to think of what had happened to the clothes Sheldon was now missing. "Okay."
Sheldon listed off a few more places were he wanted to go and Leonard sighed as he agreed to them all, knowing that at this rate Sheldon was going to be back to his old self in no time at all.
